Oxford Companion to Black British History

The Oxford Companion to Black British History is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the long and fascinating history of black people in the British Isles, from African auxiliaries stationed on Hadrian's Wall in the 2nd century AD, through John Edmonstone, who taught taxidermy to Charles Darwin, Mary Seacole, the 'Black Florence Nightingale', and Walter Tull, footballer and First World War officer, to our own day. It considers such key concepts as Emancipation and Reparations. It is also timely: the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority highlighted in their annual report of December 2005 the need to give more attention to the wider teaching of black history. OCBBH brings together a unique collection of articles which provides an overview of the black presence in Britain, and the rich and diverse contribution made to British society.

Professor David Dabydeen, critic, writer, and novelist, born in Guyana, was educated at Cambridge, London and Oxford Universities. He is a Professor in the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. His publications include The Black Presence in English Literature (1985); Hogarth's Blacks (1987); Black Writers in Britain 1760-1890 (1991); Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Black Writers in the British Romantic Period (1999). His collection Slave Song won the 1984 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and his 1999 novel A Harlot's Progress was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO, and was awarded the 2004 Raja Rao Award for Literature (India). His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004, and his most recent novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in the same year. Dr John Gilmore was educated in Barbados and in England, where he was a student at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (BA 1977; MA 1981; PhD 1985). He lived and worked in Barbados for fourteen years, where he taught at the University of the West Indies (1982-86) and later worked as Managing Editor of the regional newspaper Caribbean Week. He is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. Recent publications include The Poetics of Empire: A Study of James Grainger's The Sugar-Cane (2000); A-Z of Barbados Heritage (2003); Empires and Conquests (2003), and Freedom and Change (2004). Dr Cecily Jones is a member of the Sociology Department of the University of Warwick, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Caribbean Studies there. Her teaching and research interests address the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity and class in the slave plantation societies of the Caribbean and the Antebellum Southern states of North America; black feminist thought, and equality in higher education. Her publications include 'A Darker Shade of White: Gender and Social Class in the Reproduction of White Identity in Barbadian Plantation Society' in Heloise Brown, Madi Gilkes, and Ann Kaloski (eds) White Woman (1999), and 'Black Women in Ivory Towers: Racism and Sexism in the Academy' in Pauline Anderson and Jenny Williams (eds) Identity and Difference in Higher Education (2001).